June 19, 2009

62 comments:

The irony is that by choosing to tow the white house line so openly (see white house's ABC health care infomercial) they are inadvertently helping sell anything an Obama critic might have to offer. Not to mention Fox soaring ratings.

Maybe it's just my reaction to Glenn Greenwald saying it, but if he was "the Washington Post's best columnist" we'd have heard more about him. I wonder, at least a little bit, if this has more to do with budget tightening than ideological purity.

'Froomkin'?Sounds like a minor character in a Tolkien fantasy rip-off, or an adversary of the Care Bears.

It's a down-economy, so best to reduce, re-use and recycle those WaPo columns. Get some free intern to do the few fact-checks you need, feed it into the laptop Random Lefty Column Generator, and away you go!

I mean, really, conservatives have long made use of a reusable template, so get wid' it, liberals!

A portion of the template:Final Paragraph = [(0.5 WFBuckley + 0.1 George Will - 0.75 David Broder)* Charles Krauthammer] ÷ Robert Kagan

I agree with salamandyr. The local paper carries op eds from a variety of sources. They have never run a Froomkin column. Moreover, Froomkin is a blogger, not a columnist. A blogger can set up his tent anywhere; if he's good he doesn't need the aegis of the Guapo. Further, if he was so dang good, did they run him in the print edition?

Given the panoply of right and far right columnists on WaPo's masthead, how could one perceive the paper as anything but neo-con, or neo-con friendly?

To answer someone's question, yes, Froomkin had been sharply critical of Obama, as well he should have been.

I suspect the impetus for Froomkin's firing was his recent column taking thuggish shrink (and WaPo columnist) Charles Krauthammer to task for asserting in a recent column of his own that torture was "impermissable" and then following up that assertion with reasons why and when the impermissable could be permitted. Froomkin's criticism of Krauthammer was sharp and well-taken, and it may have prompted the well-favored but presumably thin-skinned Krauthammer to pressure WaPo management to punish Froomkin through termination.

Robert Cook: Given the panoply of right and far right columnists on WaPo's masthead, how could one perceive the paper as anything but neo-con, or neo-con friendly?

Maybe I'm missing something - I just pulled the list of WaPo columnists and I count the following conservatives: Will, Kristol, Krauthammer and Kagan. You might be able to count Kathleen Parker but she voted for Obama so explain that to me. So that's 4 (or 5) out of 30. That's between 13 and 16%. Explain to me how that's a "panoply". I'll wait.

Jeez, let's start nominating these gone but not forgotten liberal media to a Hall of SAME. Requirements are that they must have lost a job and it must be unlikely they will re-surface in a prominent new job.

I've never heard of the guy, but is it all possible that his firing had to do with some personal matter that the Washington Post is prohibited by law from discussing? What if the guy had a penchant for urinating on people's desks? Or simply pissed his boss off once to often over something completely non-political? Or, daresay, someone pulled out a calculator and figured out the guy was costing the Post more money than he brought in?

The imitation of real life liberal mantras are just boring. Think of John Edwards mantra trying to get elected so he could give away warm coats in the winter to the freezing masses. After the shock value from someone pretending everyone else, but the liberal hero, is guilty for ignoring a faux evil has worn off, then the mantra maker is only yesterday's trash.Truth is interesting. For example, Jeremy's way of equating evil thoughts and actions with traditional good thoughts and actions wears off fast. Moral equivalence mantras of good and evil are not a sign of an open mind, rather they are a sign of a decieved mind. Free speech will do its job once we see thru initial confusion and avoid the close mindedness that comes from a constant attribution of bad motives to others.

Jeremy...Thanks for repeating my good points for everyone to read again. To answer your question,I am still drinking from Old Ronald Reagan single truth whiskey, aged 30 years, served on the Rock of Natan Sharansky who was freed by the Gippur's traditional good sense that could spot evil. Reagan was the only politician in my lifetime to actually reduced taxes on the middle class. By the way, when do Pres. Obama and Speaker Pelossi start hearings on the central promise mantra which Obama bought his Presidency with: a middle class tax cut? I will wait for it, but I just wondered if it is under wraps so as not to anger the Iranians out of their final assembly of their Jew Exterminator Special. There must be a good reason.

I had forgotten until today that Dan (Froomkin) had gone after Charles (Krauthammer), which Sullivan says 'almost certainly' would have 'enraged' me. If Andrew wants to know whether it enraged me, why does he not call and ask? That's called reporting, and I would be happy to tell him. In fact nothing pleases me more than when our columnists engage with each other, in print or on Post Partisan, as any of them could tell you. It's good for traffic, and it makes for lively debate.

The disappointingly dull truth is that the decision not to renew Dan's contract--which was not made by me, but which I supported--was based on viewership data, budget constraints and judgments about how well the column was or was not adapting to a new era."

There is an article: The Firing Of A White House Watchdog that suggests that part of the problem is that he was a self-styled watchdog who quit watching his target, the White House, when its occupants changed, and has not even mentioned Gerald Walpin and his firing by name.